This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.
How do you reconcile being transgender with the fact that a lot of our sexual roles are culture-specific? For instance, imagine a MTF who wants to wear a dress. You can't tell this person "stop wearing dresses"; their desire to do so cannot be changed by society telling them no. Yet if they lived in another culture that didn't have dresses at all even for women, we know that when society told them not to wear a dress they would have eagerly gone along with it.
That's a common trans-exclusionary-radical-feminist argument. Wrong because:
1) Would you feel uncomfortable wearing a swastika? Would that send the right message about you? In India swastika is a holy symbol, not a Nazi symbol, the meaning is arbitrary. "Dress" means "I'm feminine" in our culture. It's part of our language.
Suppose in Atlantis, the mouth-sound "love" happens to mean hate and the mouth sound "hate" happens to mean love. It's still acceptable for an English speaking person to want to mouth-sound "I love you" and not "I hate you" even though the meanings of the mouth-sounds are cultural.
2) Things need not be biological to be okay. Culture-induced preferences are valid. (Though, in this case, I think gender expression is probably biological).
AFAIK boredom means, very roughly, that you're not meditating (at least not the style of meditation I practice, mindful meditation), and instead are sitting there trying not to be bored.
If you notice you're bored, notice that you noticed it, and return your attention to your focus.
What are you trying to do when you "meditate"?
If by meditation you mean concentrating on the breath and observing whatever sensations arise, when boredom strikes you could try concentrating your attention on the sensations of boredom until it goes away, then returning to breath. Same trick works great with physical pain or itching.
Some people meditate after exercising. Just lie down and imagine their body relaxing, from toes headwards. (Facial muscles are rather confusing, though.) Concentrate also on even breathing - on the count of four, begin exhaling for four 'beats', then hold your breath for four more, then take a prolonged breath, etc. (You can be more comfortable with three at first.) Idon't know about reducing the need for sleep, but it does bring calm and is easier to do for longer than seven minutes (AFA I remember).
My experience: posture matters - for example sitting on a pillow is not good enough, I learned I need to sit on the ground with the pillow under my tailbone, my lower back is straighter that way. Recommend going to a Zen center, they teach posture really well. Also esp. how the Mokusho Zen guys do it, facing a white wall and looking 45 degree down, it works better for me than closed eyes or open and looking around.
Yes. I could hardly do even five minutes when I started, eventually managed to stretch that to hours on a good day. (Those good days are rare, but still.)
My experience is that a strong dose of green tea about 10-30 minutes beforehand often helps focus, and was I think instrumental in getting those longer periods for the first time. Though it's been a while since I might misremember.
I need some list of biases for a game of Biased Pandemic for our Meet-Up. Do suitably prepared/formatted lists exist somewhere?
A humble suggestion. (Apologies for not answering the specific question you are asking, but asking another one that you revealed when you framed the question in this way)
If you are not motivated to naturally go about "serious dating". Then don't do it. It may be a social norm, but thats usually because people are motivated to do it.
Having said that - if you are trying to convince yourself that it's a waste of time; not this way. It's not.
You don't have to put up a massive investment in order to succeed in dating. A massive investment is something that I would equate to as "risky behaviour". If you start small and grow gradually out of successes - that is how you can limit your risk while also winning at life. (arguments swing each way for "investment" and whether a big investment is needed to really make it big, but that's always something you can chance after some learning)
Good luck :)
I considered spending half an hour crafting my question so that people could understand me perfectly and clearly but sometimes I just throw a question out there and see what sort of responses I get. On the internet people respond more often to short questions than giant blocks of text anyway. (Maybe I should change my policy a bit on LW as compared to other locations? Probably.)
You answered one of the questions within the question that I was asking and thank you for that! People have lots of motivations and my motivations are occasionally different than other people's. I don't have the same hyperintense motivations in this area that other people have.
Your fourth paragraph is something that resonates with my brain a bit and I will be sure to think on.
On Lesswrong I usually suggest "be more specific". I understand the "open question", and can see how they are useful for times when you might want people to think freely in order to suggest solutions.
I first talked about the other side of the coin when answering an open question. this is the open thread, so answering is a bit more free than in a discussion thread.
I wrote paragraph 4 in such a way that it can be applied to a business decision (or the realms of startups). In that sense - an unmitigated risk might be providing a product that you have not confirmed with the marketplace (they don't want it or they won't pay that much for it). To continue that analogy; that would be to go and get buff to be more appealing to the opposite sex without actually looking at who is around and if they are interested in that gesture. (and continuing further) you can assume that "buff" is a more desired body state generally; but confirming the specific market and response would be ideal to mitigate the risk of invested time. as a contrast; if you looked at the available market and found that they were actually after skills in philosophy, or humour, or happiness, or money making - those too are known desired traits worth investing in.
In terms of emotional investment; you can try really hard, or you can at least be open to it; but not fussed if it doesn't happen.
Sounds like you might like to put in a minimum investment; and relax about the whole thing. Occasionally meet strangers and chat to them; be social for social sake; enjoy life without the focussed lense of purpose towards the goal (which comes with stress).
Good luck (hope this helps more)
Since you have also indicated that you are interested in finding a life partner, and since the value of a life partner is dependent on your personality (and not a hypothetical 'ideal personality'), you may be asking the wrong question. A more relevant question might be "what are ways to reduce the investment cost of finding a life partner?" Once that question is answered, then you will have to decide if it is worth the investment.
This is a stupid question thread and I intentionally asked a question I thought was stupid. I think that lifelong companionship and emotional intimacy would be amazing. However, none of my attempts at achieving those resembled anything like that and when I look at people around me in relationships I don't see it there either.
This doesn't make me bitter or get weird stupid ideas about relationships like completely basing them on sex or abstaining due to not being interested in procreating. It doesn't make me draw any conclusions and it doesn't stop me from wanting a fulfilling relationship with someone else. All it made me do was stop for a second and double check (in a thread for stupid questions) that real, fulfilling relationships are a thing that actually exist within reality, not some sort of Hollywood bullshit, and are worth the effort to obtain and maintain. I can imagine all sorts of things, but checking that this sort of thing is actually real seemed like it could be worth a 30 second forum post.
Additionally, do you have experience of or have evidence that the benefits of companionship and emotional intimacy are worth high emotional and time investment costs? I am genuinely curious.
Sure. There are other people who have no interest in eventually procreating!
If you are far enough from the time in life when potential partners will eventually want to procreate and can deal emotionally with the certainty that you will have to break up at least at that point (although realistically you may well break up earlier), there is also a point in dating people outside that group.
EDIT: As an addendum, keep in mind that especially at a young age, people who say they will or might want to have children might do so only as a cultural default. Once exposed to the relevant mindset, they may figure out that they don't actually need to (and shouldn't) have children unless they really, really want to. I therefore suspect that the set of potential partners for child-free people is actually larger than one might think.
There was recently a lethal heat wave in Karachi.
If you go about 1000 meters below the surface of the ocean, the water gets very cold.
Why don't people try to cool off hot places by piping cold water up from the ocean? Or just bubbling air through the deep water?
About a quarter of people in Pakistan regularly practice "open defecation" due to lack of access to basic plumbing infrastructure, which probably causes a much higher casualty rate than lack of access to air conditioning (old people are usually the casualties in heat waves, so the number of QALYs lost is much lower.) I know this isn't directly an answer to your question, but I'm trying to illustrate that there is a huge infrastructure gap in there.
Also, I'm not sure how you envision this working; just having open trenches of cold evaporating saltwater throughout the city?